The Storm of Echoes

by Christelle Dabos

  Helen’s huge mouth articulated a response that didn’t reach Ophelia, but she guessed, from the querying curl of her lips, that it was more of a question. She couldn’t remember her. Like all the family spirits whose Books had been mutilated by Eulalia Gonde, Helen was condemned to forget everything all of the time. Why would she give more credence to a little stranger than to the Lords of LUX?

  Ophelia unfolded the page that she kept preciously among her false papers.

  COME AND SEE ME SOMETIME, YOUR HANDS AND YOU.

  “You have already trusted me once.”

  She raised herself up on tiptoe and handed the message to Helen, whose optical appliance was immediately set in motion on her nose to enable her to read. She would at least recognize her own handwriting. It may not have been possible to see her eyes, due to the layers of lenses, but it was quite clear that Ophelia now had her full attention.

  “Help us.”

  Helen’s long fingers closed around Ophelia’s wrists like crabs’ claws. The paper tore.

  “The echoes aren’t dangerous, young lady.”

  Ophelia felt Helen’s voice vibrating against her cheeks, spreading right across her skin, besieging her eardrums to the detriment of all that wasn’t her. Neither loudspeakers nor amphitheater were there anymore.

  “The echoes speak to whoever knows how to listen to them. You are all, including my brother, blind and deaf.”

  Helen’s mouth was an abyss bristling with teeth, so close that Ophelia could have counted them if there hadn’t been so many.

  “The echoes are everywhere now. They are in the very air you are breathing.”

  Helen finally released Ophelia’s wrists, on which her fingernails had left their mark. Very carefully, she removed the optical appliance, which she was never without, and without which she saw the world as but galaxies of atoms. Her pupils, exceedingly dilated, took over her eyes. They were like her mouth: wells that devoured the light. That devoured Ophelia.

  “They are everywhere, young lady, and around you even more than anywhere else. You attract the echoes like flies. They expect the unexpected from you.”

  Ophelia was stunned.

  “But the airshi—”

  “Shut up and listen.”

  The enormous pupils saw, heard, touched things that were completely beyond Ophelia.

  “You should go beyond the cage. Turn back. Really turn back. There, and only there, you will understand. You may even be able to make yourself useful. You claim that I afforded you my trust, to your hands and to you, but when the time is over, will you have enough fingers?”

  All that Ophelia had grasped in this tangle of words was that Helen wouldn’t be stopping the expulsions. She was like a radio receiver tuned to a different frequency from her own. The frequency of the echoes? The very second Helen went quiet, the sensory barrier that her power had surrounded her with shattered.

  Ophelia was engulfed in noise, and it was no longer just the loudspeakers. What was taking place now, right around the stand, led her to think that maybe she had made the situation worse.

  THE FABRICATION

  As the family guard lost control, men and women surged forward to hold out their arms, imploringly, to the family spirits. They pointed at Ophelia, indicating that they, too, wanted the right to plead their cause. The canopy’s shade intensified the luminous ink on their foreheads. Their cries were so desperate, in some cases, so indignant in others, they could be heard despite the sirens.

  All were repeating the same words:

  “Give us a job!”

  Because her optical appliance was in her hand, Helen watched them without seeing them, listened to them without hearing them. As for Pollux, he smiled at them, hesitantly. Far from diminishing, the cries just got louder.

  Never had Ophelia witnessed such an uprising in a public place in Babel. All of these people, whom they wanted to send back to their families of origin, had started building new lives for themselves here. How many of them would see their homes inhabited by others? How many were being thrown out when they had nowhere else to go? How many nuisances like Wolf were being got rid of at the same time? Overcome by their distress, Ophelia didn’t dare to imagine how they would all feel if they discovered that this one-way flight might not even reach its destination.

  It was just then that she spotted, among all the faces, the only person not to have one. Hugo, the automaton, was cleaving his way through the crowd to reach the stand, scattering telegram tapes as he went. Octavio was sitting up on his shoulders. Ophelia understood why when he disconnected the loudspeaker from the nearest post, making its siren stop. Encouraged by his initiative, others did the same, from one tier to the next.

  “I am a Son of Pollux.”

  Perched on the automaton, Octavio didn’t have to raise his voice. His declaration captured the attention of all those who had besieged the stand. He wasn’t big, but he had a charisma that wasn’t just down to his virtuoso’s uniform. Ophelia herself was hanging on his every word.

  “En fait, I am the son of Lady Septima. The future successor of those who want to send you away from Babel. And yet,” he continued, unperturbed by the sounds of disapproval that were already rising, “I share your outrage. The way you have been treated today is unjustifiable. As a representative of the Official Journal, I will make that known to our entire ark. So, I beg you, keep calm. We can find a solution as long as we seek it together, with Lady Helen and Sir Pollux.”

  A few seconds of silence followed, during which Ophelia, transfixed by Octavio’s red eyes, was convinced that order would be restored.

  But neither Helen nor Pollux reacted, the former having retreated to her echoes, the latter prisoner of his own indecision.

  “Me, my lord, I’ve got a solution!” someone exclaimed. “Employ me instead of your automaton!”

  “Real work for real people!” added someone else.

  The crowd immediately began to jostle Hugo while chanting, in unison, “Job stealer! Job stealer!” no longer concerned with Octavio, who clung to the automaton’s telegraph aerial to keep his balance. When the metal belly growled, “Laziness is the mother of all vices,” the collective anger turned to rage, to boos, to blows. A violence that had been repressed for years erupted against the machine. Trapped up on Hugo’s shoulders, Octavio had to struggle against those grabbing at his boots to tear off his Forerunner’s wings.

  He fell.

  As Ophelia entered the fray to assist him, a pathetic attempt to help, an explosion rocked them all. Thick, acrid smoke spread like volcanic gas. All those who had tried to destroy Hugo stared wide-eyed with astonishment, the whites of their eyes standing out against their soot-covered skin.

  All that remained of the automaton was a heap of dust. Had he exploded?

  At first there was shock, then panic. The commotion in the amphitheater turned into anarchy. Some screamed, “Murder!” others, “Assassination!”—and too bad that those were forbidden words. Despite their gigantic size, Helen and Pollux were swept up in this human torrent. The family guard had lost control.

  Lady Septima’s authoritarian voice rang out through the last loudspeakers to remain connected:

  “Those summoned who leave the confines of the amphitheater other than by airship will be deemed outlaws. I repeat . . . repeat: those summoned who leave the confines of the amphitheater other than by airship will be deemed outlaws.”

  There was no one left to listen to her. The real danger, right now, was the crowd. In the middle of the crush, Ophelia spotted a crouched form on the ground, covered in Hugo’s dust.

  “Octavio!”

  She had to endure much pushing and shoving before reaching him. He was being trampled underfoot.

  Ophelia called out his name again, tried to help him up, was pushed over on top of him. She curled into a ball to protect herself from the knees striking her from all
directions. They were going to end up with broken bones.

  They needed help.

  Ophelia sensed a power, lurking deep inside her like a wild beast, that awoke to her call. The Dragons’ claws. Never before had she been so acutely aware of their existence, their parameters, their impetus, of the way they extended her nerves to adopt the form and intensity she might want. Ophelia was so amazed to have this much control of her claws, after three years of putting up with them, that, fleetingly, she almost forgot about the crowd. Prompted by a primal instinct, she felt her consciousness extend beyond her bodily limitations; she connected to a web of neural networks that weren’t her own. Her claws allowed her to see a multitude of frenzied legs far more clearly than her other senses did.

  Don’t hurt.

  Exerting her power, Ophelia cast away all but herself and Octavio, triggering an avalanche of bodies and expletives all around them.

  This break gave them just enough time to stand up before the next surge of feet. Beneath the layer of soot covering him, Octavio seemed unscathed. Or almost. He blinked with eyes that no longer glowed at all, and uttered five almost inaudible words:

  “I can’t see a thing.”

  Ophelia took his hand. Octavio had come to this amphitheater for her; she would leave it with him. She led him to one of the stairwell security shutters, toward which bodies were charging while barging into each other. A few joined forces to try to raise the barrier. Ophelia used her Animism to contaminate the shutter with her determination, but it wouldn’t budge. The claws were of no use here, either: they only affected living beings.

  “There!” someone shouted.

  On the other side of the shutter was a crank connected to some gears. Beyond reach. All arms plunged between the slats, stretching toward the mechanism. A Vesperal Phantom managed to extend its own arm further by partially turning it into vapor. Reaching the crank and turning it demanded a supreme effort but combined with the exertions of those pushing up the shutter, it succeeded in unblocking the exit.

  Everyone surged down the stairs in a flood of footsteps.

  Pushed along by the current, Ophelia scrambled down the steps. She clung onto Octavio so as not to lose him in the chaos. Every turn in the stairs flung them against the wall.

  The echoes of Lady Septima became increasingly distant:

  “Outlaws . . . laws . . . law . . .”

  At the turn of one final spiral, they were engulfed in fog. The exit, at last. Ophelia just kept running. Her sandals skidded on the damp cobbles. She was aware only of the mist on her glasses and Octavio’s hand in hers.

  Some arms enfolded them, pulling them backwards. It was Blaise and Wolf. With index fingers pressed to lips, they pointed out the figures moving around in the haze. The family guard was carrying out mass arrests. A few steps more, and Ophelia would have fallen right into their trap.

  She turned in all directions. Where to escape? Octavio was still wide-eyed but sightless. His family power couldn’t be counted on, and they were surrounded by shadowy forms. Which of them were guards? Which civilians?

  One of them was standing close to Ophelia. Too close.

  Anonymous, motionless, and silent.

  Ophelia couldn’t make out its face, but she recognized it instantly. It was the mysterious figure in the fog she had encountered at the edge of the void, the previous day. The same silhouette, the same strange bearing, hypervigilant, as though waiting for something.

  Slowly, the shadow in the fog took a few steps to distance itself—steps that were soundless on the cobbles—and then stopped. Waiting, once again.

  It was there for them.

  Whether it was friend or foe, Ophelia decided that she couldn’t afford to dither. If they remained here, they would get caught. She tightened her fingers around Octavio’s, and signaled to Blaise and Wolf to follow her.

  Satisfied, the shadow set off again. They walked, blindly, behind it, through successive layers of cloud. All that now reached them of the sun was a twilight glow. The world around them was reduced to indistinct figures crying out, coming together, separating, in a kind of mass hysteria. It was an uprising the likes of which Babel hadn’t known for centuries. Some people took advantage of it by taking to the streets to fling leaflets and cobblestones around, which appeared as dark streaks against a white backdrop. Laughter was their response to the family guard’s whistleblowing.

  “Celebrate the end of the world in style! Join the Brats of Babel!”

  Ophelia, Octavio, Blaise, and Wolf made it through this chaos without encountering projectiles, or patrols, or political agitators. The shadow was guiding them through what now seemed to be the district of the power exchanges. It remained close enough not to be lost sight of, far enough not to be identified. Not once did it emit the slightest sound.

  Who are you? Ophelia repeated to herself. Where are you taking us?

  The more she tried to make out its contours, the more tense she felt. It wasn’t the silhouette of a woman, but that meant nothing. Eulalia Gonde no longer had a fixed appearance; maybe the same went for her reflection. It was impossible to guess what form the latter had adopted when it had left the mirror. And Ophelia had already crossed the path of this stranger twice now, since the landslide. She ruled out a coincidence, but from that to deducing that it was the Other . . . Why would someone whose favorite pastime consisted of destroying arks suddenly care about the fate of a few humans?

  Ophelia held her breath. The stranger had stopped in the middle of the fog. It uttered not a word, but, like some mime artist, started making absurd gestures, pointing at the sky with its left hand, the ground with its right hand, then at the sky with its right hand and at the ground with its left hand.

  “A lunatic,” muttered Professor Wolf.

  Evening closed in, and the stranger’s shadow became absorbed into those of that neighborhood. Ophelia moved forward to the spot where it had stopped. She banged into the gates of a factory, topped by a huge pediment, all brickwork and wrought iron.

  FABRICATION OF AUTOMATONS

  LAZARUS & SON

  Once again, this couldn’t be a coincidence.

  “What now?” asked an anxious voice.

  Ophelia noticed several glowing spots in the fog. It was the foreheads of some of the summoned who, overtaken by events, had just followed them at a distance. They didn’t know one another, but they were all outlaws from now on.

  Ophelia pushed at the gate. It wasn’t locked.

  Together, they made their way into the factory. A strange mechanical dog with several heads stood up, with a great clickety-clack, as they approached. It didn’t sound the alarm. They then discovered a large, barely lit hangar in which rows of faceless figures were working on production lines, all along the conveyor belts. They were all automatons. They were cutting out, filing down, piercing, linking, and screwing parts that seemed straight out of a clockmaker’s shop. As they concentrated on their repetitive tasks, they showed no reaction to the visitors’ arrival. For a moment, Ophelia expected to see Lazarus in the midst of all this activity, before recalling that he was on his travels. The automatons had clearly been designed for constructing other automatons. The factory functioned autonomously during its owner’s absences.

  Ophelia still couldn’t find the stranger who had saved them from the patrols. In an adjoining garage, on the other hand, she found a wheelchair. Empty.

  “Ambrose?” she called out.

  The door of a wagon with propellers immediately opened. The adolescent leaned out, awkwardly, to take a puzzled look at Ophelia and all those accompanying her. The scarf wound around his hair was now standing up in the form of a question mark.

  “Mademoiselle? I was coming to your rescue! C’est à dire, I would have if I’d managed to get this heliwagon started. It’s a touch trickier than my whaxi. How did you know where to find me?”

  “I didn�
�t. Someone led us here, but has disappeared before the introductions. Do you have a pharmacy in the factory? My friend needs some treatment.”

  No sooner had Ophelia made this request than Octavio let go of her hand to rub his soot-blackened eyelids.

  “Water will be fine.”

  “Bien sûr!” exclaimed Ambrose, extracting his legs, first one then the other, from the heliwagon. “There’s a tap in the maintenance area, beside the stairs.”

  He staggered over to his wheelchair, hampered by his inverted feet. His struggle became so grotesque, the outlaws looked away.

  “You are Lazarus’s son?” grunted Professor Wolf. “One of your automatons has just caused complete mayhem. It exploded.”

  As he settled into his wheelchair, Ambrose seemed more contrite than surprised.

  “Imploded,” he corrected. “Someone tried to take it apart, I presume?”

  “A whole mob.”

  “Diable! Father incorporated a self-destructive mechanism in all his inventions, to protect his trade secrets. It’s spectacular, but harmless.”

  “Harmless!” Wolf scoffed. “It sparked everything off. Couldn’t Lazarus have just filed for a patent like everyone else? Already, back when he taught at my college, he always had to be different.”

  Ophelia turned her attention to the group of outlaws, who were passing around industrial sandpaper to rub against their foreheads. But however hard they rubbed, the luminous ink remained. She could read on their faces the same internal questions. What now? What to do? Where to go?

  Ophelia felt sorry for them. With her glove, she stroked the lettering on the side of the heliwagon: “DELIVERY OF AUTOMATONS.” For herself, she knew what, she knew where, and she knew how. Whoever the stranger in the fog might be, they had done her a serious favor.

  “Come,” she said to Octavio, whose red eyes were flickering like defective lightbulbs.

  She led him to the maintenance area and ran some water for him at the sink. Silently, he filled his cupped hands with it, plunged his face into it, and then did the same, again and again, until abruptly stopping. He remained standing there, fingers pressed to eyelids, as if wishing he never had to reopen them ever again.